Since the start of 2014 I have been working as a teacher in the Sovereign Hill Costumed School, a shift from my previous role as an Education Officer. Since April 2014, marking a year now, I have been full time as the Ma’am in St. Peter’s Denominational School. This role sees me running a 2-day costumed role-play experience for Year 5/6 students twice a week, with one day spent on administration/organisation.

It’s been an easy move in some ways, a big shift in others. Most notably I have moved from focussing on innovation and social media to working, predominately, with technology of the Victorian Era, such as the slate board (which is eerily similar in shape and size to the iPad!). I love living the past. I was also fortunate that my previous role had equipped me well in terms of background knowledge, thus enabling the role-play to come more easily. But I still continuously find gaps in my knowledge that makes it hard to be respond to some situations authentically – such as knowledge of country names, boundaries and rulers as they were in 1854. It is motivating to keep learning contextual information about the era.

But the nature of the role and the associated workload means that my knowledge about, and experience in, social media and technological innovations in education is suffering. Consequently my blog has been rather dormant over the past year. This can also be attributed to having a toddler who (delightfully) keeps my ‘free’ time to a minimum!

16x Tables

I’ve consequently realised how difficult it is to stay abreast of changes and innovations without a concentrated effort to keep reading, learning, trialling, posting… I do still read and follow, but the active learning and trialling hasn’t been happening. I feel so fortunate to be in the job that I am, it is great fun, so it has been a positive sacrifice in many ways.

#lifeofan1850steacher

I have kept tapped in to the social media world through following, but also posting about my own unique working experience. I use twitter and instagram to offer some commentary and reflection. I use the hashtags: #schoolhistory and #lifeofan1850steacher. I have also been recording a few of the memorable words written by my students using #StudentsOfStPeters. Each student writes me a letter before their visit in preparation for them to take on the role of an 1850s student. They speak about their family, life and journey to the goldfields. Sometimes the children are beautifully eloquent in their descriptions, showing amazing insight into the era. Some of those gems are worth recording and sharing, hence #StudentsOfStPeters.

I hope over time I will find more ways to mix old and new. I value the authenticity and simplicity of my 1850s classroom. But I’m sure there are more ways to connect with students before and after their visit. Perhaps teachers curious about changes to their profession too. I also see opportunities to reach a wider audience interesting in Sovereign Hill and School History. Do you have any ideas for me that you can share?

I was delighted to be involved with the planning and delivery of this Symposium. It is the first time it has been held outside Europe. The program ran from Wed 25th – Sat 28th March on site at Sovereign Hill. During most of Thursday I was teaching a visiting school group for Day 2 of their 2 day 1850s school immersion experience.

On Thursday afternoon I presented my paper In their shoes: children comparing their experiences to those before them. This paper was a discussion about our costume school program and how, through personally experiencing a recreation of history, are able to develop an appreciation on the context in which historical events occurred. I suggest that we create disbelief in the children which leads to cognitive dissonance. To resolve this dissonance and create resonance they need simply to develop the understanding that people believed and behaved differently in the past.

I was sandwiched between my colleagues Peter Hoban and Marion Littlejohn who spoke on the Sovereign Hill Education Program – a workshop based program for visiting schools (usually 1 hour long) where I worked before moving to the costumed schools at the start of 2014. After me was Catherine Howard from Eltham College who spoke on their unique drama-based history program for Year 3 and 4 students: the History Centre.

Eltham College’s program is very exciting. The children become emotionally involved in different stories they are enacting. One particular program is their study of the gold rush, which concludes with them taking on the role of Chinese Miners where they come to Sovereign Hill and reenact the work from robe where staff (including me) hurl abuse and cabbage leaves at the children to recreate the attitudes and hostility of the town towards the Chinese immigrants. Catherine talked about how it was such a powerful experience for the children.

On Friday morning we heard about some fantastic overseas projects. Anne Katrine Gjerløff from the University of Aarhus (Copenhagen) spoke about the major project she worked on Skole 200 – celebrating 200 years of public schooling in Denmark. The project was centred around a collection of historical research outlining the history of education in Denmark. The celebrations, activities, learning resources, exhibitions etc were often large-scale and nation wide. The organisers used the universal relevance of school (everyone went to school!) to generate interest and reflection. The was a focus on concrete objects and shared stories. Crown Princess Mary acted as patron to the project which helped to generate media interest and coverage. All in all it was a very exciting project that seem to be very successful at bringing people together across all generations and all parts of the country.

Annemarie Augschöll Blasbichler from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (South Tyrol, Italy) spoke on her paper Living and Learning in our grandparents’ school – A project where children worked as young researchers to learn about the history of schooling. Some points Annemarie mentioned that were particularly interesting was the importance of using authentic materials and sources – showing children the proper tools and methods used in research. That the young researchers, as they are school students, have a level of expertise and prior knowledge in the area and the historical nature of the research gives them a connection to their families (eg. grandparents). These connections provide them with the motivation for a more in-depth educational experience. The children utilise the University’s Documentation and Research Centre during the project.

Annemarie particularly mentioned a pivotal stage in the learning process where students are generating research topics and themes and they come to realise the limits of their own experience and knowledge – that it is not enough. This step is essential in the learning process. As Annemarie said the staff support students as they go through the “process of realisation that their own familiarity with the topic is nearly useless trying to understand the life and actions of pupils, teachers and parents during their grandparents’ times.” As children delved into the documentation and biographies they were able to understand the limitations of generalisations as well. These aspects resonated with me as being very advanced components of historical research for children and the project appears to develop complex skills in the children.

We then heard from Horst Massman who spoke about an exhibition at the School Museum Bremen (Germany) that looked at Post-war education 1945-1960. A complementary project to the exhibitions was local students researching memories concerning the post-war period and the time of reconstruction in the 1950s. There were 30 classes from 20 difference schools. Most importantly, as with Annemarie’s project, the children where supported by professionals: 7 researchers and 3 curators. The children involved collected memories, objects, photographs and documents. It was an interesting presentation and an important reminder that 20th century history still feels very ‘old’ to contemporary students.

In the afternoon we heard from Rosalie Triolo from Monash University who spoke on the educational resource she developed: Schooling, Service and the Great War (Available online). There is both a primary and a secondary resource for Australian Teachers that looks at WW1 from a school perspective. Rosalie talked about some of the content and it was very interested to see how schools were affected by the war: serving teachers and students, propaganda sent to schools, grief in the school community etc.

A paper by Antonis Hourdakis and Sofia Trouli (University of Crete) was read by our Interpretation Manager Barry Kay. It discussed the history of school gardens and how research into historical pedagogical activities has proven relevant to modern schools. That schools have been able to learn from best-practises of the past to increase the humanist and biological content in modern schools.

I was disappointed to miss some of the other presenters, but the papers I saw were most interesting. The conference had smaller numbers that previous years it has been held in Europe – it is a very long way for the regular attendees to travel. But we did have some very interested Australian participants from School History museums (a large contingency from South Australia) and also some school archivists. It made for a diverse and interesting group of people and a most enjoyable conference.

Sound of the key points I took from the conference were:

Relatabilty – Working in the area of engaging children in the history of education, our greatest strength is in the relevance of school to the lives of our students. As current students they come from a place of background knowledge and interest – we need to continually harness that.

Direct Comparison – As school us an aspect of life that continues in modern day, it allows for children to make a direct comparison between school now and then. This can allow them to see the differences and similarities more easily.

Supporting teachers to use their own resources – Some schools are not utilising their own local history, so as experts in our field we can look at developing resources to assist schools to use their own history to engage their students and contextualise the period of history they may be learning about.

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On Monday I attended my first professional development seminar since starting Maternity Leave in February. It was a lunchtime seminar at the Immigration Museum Melbourne on the topic of ‘Rethinking the Museum Experience‘. I did have my, very obliging, 5 month old daughter in tow, so I wasn’t at my full capacity. Unfortunately I missed all of Andrea Witcomb‘s presentation while I was settling her.

Nonetheless, there were some interesting messages I took away from the seminar. Laurajane Smith and Philipp Schorch spoke about research they had conducted with visitors to the Immigration museum. Both looked at how the visitors engaged with the content in the museum, particularly in relation to emotional engagement and the role of identity in shaping their visit.

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I had been hoping to visit MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) for quite some time, so I was pleased to finally make there last week. I had heard a lot about MONA and their mobile experience ‘The O’ at various Museum conferences and gatherings, so I had quite high expectations. I’m pleased to say I wasn’t disappointed and it lived up to the hype. A visit to MONA is quite a powerful experience.

Photography is allowed inside the museum, but publication on websites is not allowed without permission. So I will share only images of the entrance.

Initial Impressions

I arrived at MONA by car, rather than ferry. When you enter MONA you travel to the lowest level by a cylindrical lift or spiral stairs that wind around the lift. You emerge into a cavernous hall with towering stone walls. This entrance really set the scene for the visit. It feels like you are delving into something deep, unknown, confronting and surprising.

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Last week I visited the recently renovated Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. I hadn’t visited it prior to renovation so I can’t comment on the transformation, but what I did see was quite impressive. What struck me the most was the aesthetic quality of the exhibitions, particularly those in the Bond Store Galleries. They were very beautiful spaces to be in.

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Reflections from Perfecting the Blend Conference

On Friday (7th December) I attended a small part of the Perfecting the Blend Conference held at the impressive Earth Ed Centre at Mt Clear College here in Ballarat. The whole conference ran for a full two days with a huge range of presenters talking about the innovative and seamless use of technology to support learning. Unfortunately I was only able to attend two sessions on Friday afternoon, but they were a good opportunity to look at how Museums are using Video Conferencing to deliver Education Programs.

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Things to remember when defining and implementing a digital strategy

Workshop participants takeaways from the day.

Last week I blogged a summary of the Digital Strategy Masterclass run by Jasper Visser as part of Intercom 2012. Running through the Digital Engagement Framework as a planning process was a useful exercise. But it also allowed time to consider bigger issues around digital engagement and strategic planning. There were a few key points that I took away from the day: